


the boy who flew too close to the sun

by vansgoghing



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Gen, Inspired by The Fall of Icarus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Mythical Beings & Creatures, Mythology References, One Shot, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:09:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27815863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vansgoghing/pseuds/vansgoghing
Summary: a one shot of my retelling of the fall of icarus, something close to my heartoriginally written for a class but i put a little too much soul into this onemaybe one day it will be something morebut for now here is the story of the boy who flew too close to the sun
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	the boy who flew too close to the sun

The turquoise of the glistening sea surrounding the island has become sickly, nauseating to me — laughing at me with its starbursts of light across the crystalline surface, taunting me with all the ships it carries, swirling in Crete’s central harbor like fallen leaves in a pond. Before King Minos had incarcerated my father, after each grueling day of constructing the impossible labyrinth for that wretched creature, the Minotaur, he’d come sit with me on the ledge of our room at every dusk. We’d play a game, guessing at where every ship and skiff hailed from, entering the harbor from the great velvet expanse of the sea we’d see from our tower. My father had his critical eye of a renowned craftsman, uprooting the origin of every vessel by the subtle shading of the wood, the weave of the sails, the mechanisms and divine carvings he’d spot from countless lengths away. I had my imagination, restless and starved for some paradisiacal land awaiting me just beyond the precipice of the horizon, of a place where the words _Crete_ and _King Minos_ were just another bird’s cry heard on the wind. 

“Is that not Jason’s ship?” I’d cried once, pointing excitedly to a sketch of a large vessel just inside the realm of the horizon, its billowous sails and prow growing sharper with every passing minute. My father had gently grabbed me by the waist, for in the flurry of my excitement I could have sailed over the window ledge to come meet Jason and the illustrious Argonauts, to hear with my own ears of his journey for the divine Golden Fleece. 

“I do not think so, Icarus,” my father had murmured gently, his calloused hand held on one of my thin arms to placate me. “Do you see the curve of the prow, the slope of the sails? I would say it hails from Thebes.” 

“Oh, but why can't it be Jason?” I’d pouted, being unfairly petulant with my wearied father after a long day of slaving away at wood and metals. “He would take me with him back to Iolcus and I’d become one of his Argonauts, and we’d adventure across every stretch of the world, Jason and I.” 

The greatest craftsman, architect, innovator of the Greeks had sighed; for all of his brilliance in constructing the most ingenious innovations, he could not construct a suitable answer for me. In those days he had spared of educating me on his eternal predicament involving the King of Crete, which in truth had extended to me. 

“It’s time for supper, Icarus,” he had said, scooping up my lanky body as I’d wriggled in his grip, wanting to be set free to watch the weave of the foreign ships on the sea until my eyes would turn unseeing. 

In my youth I’d been infatuated with Jason and all of the heroes of our realm, for how liberated and boundless they’d seemed; an ephemeral yet rattling presence across all of our lands, never gracing one place for too long, only leaving the life of their stories to eternity. It was an unappeasable hunger of mine, to escape the island and sail sail sail away until it was swallowed whole by the horizon, to find myself in places with names that never have graced my ears before, of shores and mountain ridges I’d never traced with my eyes. Yet my face and my father’s had been cursed at the harbor, for no matter how many times we came and begged with gold cascading from our hands, the skippers would turn their haggard faces away; for it was sure death to carry the cargo of Daedalus and his son from the shores of Crete. 

The obsession had eventually faded from a flame to an ember as the monotonous years had dragged by and no one had come to spirit me away from this island, haunted by its crooked king and his corrupt monster. The only allure left in my life was the inexhaustible journey of the sun, of watching Helios far above make his rounds over the world in his flaming chariot. If only Helios would come to take me with him now, for if I must have monotony in my life, then let it be my daily trek across the boundless cerulean sky.

I watch him now, blinding and lightning-bright as he just begins his ascent from the eastern cusp of the sea and the sky. A stray seabird flaps down onto the ledge I sit on in a flurry of feathers and screeches, its beady eyes curiously boring into mine as we assessingly cock our heads towards each other.

I sit motionless but for the rise and fall of my hair being teased in the fingers of the wind, waiting as the seabird hops zigzaggedly towards me, anxious for the bread in my hands. He is half an arm’s length away when I pounce, catching the white mass of prickly feathers in my fingers and wringing his neck before its surprised screech finishes echoing on the palace walls. 

“I’ve got another one, Father,” I say, standing from the ledge and ducking back inside the sunlit room. Daedalus crouches in the middle of the worn stone floor, a storm of feathers, wax, and thread at his feet. The frames of the two large sets of wings are just beginning to fill in with feathers, yet he continues to have me hunt for more — likely to keep my restlessness from consuming me whole, for he knows how I’ve taken to forsaking sleep once he’d whispered me his plan in the abyss of the night, only the moon goddess Selene to hear of our coming escape as she flew above us in her silvery chariot across the night sky. 

“Very good, Icarus. Pluck the feathers and bring them here,” my father murmurs as he pours more melted wax on a ridge of wood and feathers, securing the two together. Judging by the mass of quills scattered about, so many that I had to shove a rug against the bottom of the door to block the slit from sucking them out the threshold and exposing us in the hall, it would be an exercise done in vain. But I obey, sitting on the floor with my back against my bed as I begin the tedious process of stripping the bird of its beauty. I’m distracted though as always by watching my father work; the miracle of his hands flitting unerringly over the lattice of his craft, his dark curls echoed in mine that stick irksomely to the perspiration at his temples in his effort. At one point I abandon my task and he doesn’t mind; the silent language we’ve garnered between us draws me to help him at his side. I hover with him over the fledgling carcasses of the wings, quietly passing him the correct awls and wax bowl without a word flitting between us. 

It is dusk by the time my father rocks back onto his heels and stands in one swift, lively motion despite his exertion, wringing his hands on his apron free of dried wax and feather puff. I rise from the flotsam of discarded materials and trimmings, my back aching from hours crouched at the floor. 

Two sets of magnificent wings lay sprawled at our feet, lusting to be at our backs and swallowing the air of the open sky. 

My father and I stare longingly back, the roar of the wind already at our ears as the ground recedes into one meaningless blur beneath us.

“Tomorrow before dawn should the wind allow us,” he breathes, his words barely more than a rustle of bird’s wings. “We leave when neither Selene nor Helios are to catch us in our leap for freedom.”

I nod at his words, my eyes closed, the silhouette of two soaring shapes outlined in the sun burning behind my eyelids. Tomorrow, tomorrow. I will be free at last tomorrow.

—

“But remember, my son, do not fly too close to the sea for your wings will get laden heavy with salt and water, nor too close to the sun for the wax will melt and all of the feathers will come undone.”

I hardly hear my father over the roar of anticipation in my head, the inside of my skull crashing with waves of effervescent joy. Neither of us got a drip of sleep in the night, for we spent hours learning the craft of flight, hovering within the cage of our high-domed room. My father was anxious as he reckoned we might not master flying in time before the ink of the sky would bleed to rose, however as the horizon became teased with the first shades of violet we could beat our feathered arms tirelessly and steadily. 

We wait for the moon to finish setting, for the opening in the sky that is devoid of eyes. The palace still slumbers beneath our heels, the king unbeknownst to our brewing escape, only the early peasants and farmers of the fields below to witness the ascent to our new lives.

“You worry too much, Father,” I murmur, flexing my fingers around the straps of the wings. “I will follow you, wherever you go.”

He trails his eyes away from the drop beyond the ledge and looks over at me, his eyes made of the brown of cherished leather and all of his infinite concern and adoration for me. He nods, once, solemn and ready. I tilt my head towards the open air, beckoning for him to take the leap. 

I shift out of his way as he steps forward to the edge so that the bulk of our wings do not interfere with one another’s as we take flight. For a moment he stands with his toes hanging over the precipice, looking out at the dizzying promise of the horizon — and then he raises his arms, his wings above his head, and with one mighty stroke takes off.

I cannot resist the urge to scuttle to the edge right as he disappears below to see if he’s succeeded in defying nature, or else await the worse alternative. Just as I peek over he rises above me on a thermal gust, the whooshing air from his beating wings whispering against my face. 

I take it as a sign to rise from my crouch and open my own arms, feeling every wisp of feather gratefully drink in the wind, as if thirsted from their time separated from it. My arms well with power, feeling the euphoric potential of my father’s craft begging to carry me up, up, up through the air.

I sweep my arms down and step over the ledge, the ground rushing up below me at a terrifying speed as I’m afraid for a second that something’s failed, that my lifeblood will soon be painted on the cobbles of the palace courtyard. I spastically begin to flap my arms again and again, the wind at last catching in the expanse of the wings and beginning to gently carry me up. I feel weightless and delicate, as if I’m perched on the precarious layer of a cloud, soaring upwards. 

The relief on my father’s face is palpable, even from a distance. I give him a reckless grin, but not without a tinge of a reflection of the strained lines on his face. 

The sprawl of Crete below us is painted in the aquamarine shadows of pre-dawn as we soar towards the open sea, the palace pressing in at our backs like a wrathful Titan at the brink of wakefulness. The horizon bleeds from navy to lilac to bougainvillea pink in the span of minutes, but by the time the chariot of Helios begins to peak out from the edge of the world directly ahead of us, Crete is just a collection of rotten memories and shadows at our backs. The sea turns a livid turquoise at the first rays of the sun, glistening at our feet as if sprinkled with gold. I nearly sail down to feel the kiss of seamist on my toes, but a warning whistle from my father reminds me of his cautionary words. 

We fly for what could be minutes or hours, the sun steadily crawling higher, higher up the wall of the sky to reach its lusted zenith. The collective booms of our wings become a lullaby to my ears, the lilt of the wind and whisper of waves below pacifying the initial calamity of my mind.

The tears of the sun grow a fuzzy, warm daze at my periphery, slowly creeping inwards. The air feels the mushy, cottony warmth preceding sleep — I feel my eyes shuttering bright red at times as I rest my eyelids against the sun, stumbling between lost sleep and the bursts of euphoria of being free, so free, at last. 

The honeyed warmth of the heavens above beckons to me, singing me into its embrace. I feel godly, divine; I half-think that the next moment my fingers brush through the air, they’ll come away painted the azure blue of the sky’s ceiling. I see Helios looking down at me from above — the piercing gold flame of his eyes, the halo of liquid sunlight above his aureate hair. The wry mouth that dominates his lambent face is twisted into a haughty smirk as he sets his gaze on mine.

 _Come here, boy,_ he sings to me, his voice sweet as sunbathed summer air. _I will show you the world, the groves of golden apples and the sugar-coated mountains, the lands where Olympians and mortals walk side by side. Come ride with me in my golden chariot, boy._

I climb higher and higher through the air, clawing at tufts of cloud to get to Helios and his chariot, his four fiery steeds tracking him through the sky. I hear the cry of my father from somewhere below, or perhaps it’s just the cry of a seabird — either way it does not matter, for in this moment it’s just me and my fingers racing towards the sun, the taunt of light and possibility consuming me whole. 

I nearly feel the brush of the wheel of the chariot, the rush of horse hooves stirring my hair. I look up into the haughty face of the god of the sun, and he smiles at me; it is a smile that cuts like a knife, that burns like a thousand sunbeams concentrated into a single blinding blade of light. Every stroke of my wings begins to feel heavy and sluggish; feathers all around me coming undone in a flurry of white, cinders escaping a fire. He laughs the rattling, cataclysmic laugh of a god as I begin to droop through the air, wax weeping along my arms and fingers in sticky long streaks like warm honey. The last I see is the cruel glint of his lambent eyes, deathly and jovial as the air gives out from under me and I am falling, falling, feathers soaring upwards all around me like the trail of air bubbles around a pebble sinking through the water. I cry out but my tongue catches on the ruthless rush of air, my hands fluttering against the empty sky like the desperate birds with clipped wings. 

There is a moment of utter emptiness, of the cruel release into this transient taste of freedom, slipped out from beneath me like the ground going out from under my feet in those first electrifying seconds of flight. I think of my father, alone in his plight before but beside me all of this time, and now —


End file.
